


Duo

by yarroway



Category: House M.D.
Genre: Episode: s06e21 Help Me, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-09
Updated: 2016-05-11
Packaged: 2018-06-07 11:11:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6801367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yarroway/pseuds/yarroway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two ways Help Me could have ended. From a prompt by Soophilia which had Wilson showing up instead of Cuddy.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Option One: Wilson arrives a little later than Cuddy did...

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: House, M.D. belongs to David Shore, Universal Television, Heel and Toe Productions, and a lot of other people who are not me. I'm not making any money from this.
> 
> Thanks: as always, to Srsly_yes for her patient beta work.

The pills are in his hand. He hurts everywhere and the pills are in his hand, and he wants them. He doesn’t want to want them, but he does.

House looks at the doorway. There’s no one here to stop him. There’s no one here to save him.

Why not take them? Why not blot it all out?

Amber…He doesn’t want to see her again. He never wants to see her again. He never wants to have trouble discriminating reality from delusion again. He could have lost his license permanently. He could have killed his patient. He remembers lying in Wilson’s bathtub realizing he’d been wrong about MS. He remembers not being able to trust his perceptions or his conclusions, thinking it was eosinophilic pneumonitis and then being sure that meant it was anything but that. Worse, he remembers Chase.

He also remembers all the years he took Vicodin without any of that happening.

He thinks the reason he hallucinated Amber a year ago was that he’d still felt guilty about her death. He knows that it wasn’t his fault, that no one could not have predicted the accident, but the truth was that he’d been frightened and jealous. He’d wanted her for himself and he’d wanted her dead, and then she was, and suddenly both of those wants were betrayals.

Has he forgiven himself enough to be sure that won’t happen again? It’d be interesting to find out. It’s not like he’ll be losing anything if he is wrong. A detox will get rid of her. No one will know he’s taken a handful of pills, and… no one will care. Cuddy was right. She and Wilson were both moving on. Trading up. While he has nothing and no one.

_Except these_. His fingers close around the pills.

He swallows and then coughs. He isn’t used to dry swallowing anymore, but it’s comforting to feel them go down. It’s comforting to know that the pain will fade soon. He scooches further down against the bathtub and waits for them to kick in.

******

His dreams are troubled. Someone is chasing him down a long hallway. He runs but never fast enough or far enough. He passes people. Cameron and Chase, their heads bent together over a medical chart, Wilson and Sam playing cards together, Taub and Thirteen doing a tango. They don’t notice him.

He comes to a door and flings it open. Cuddy is there. She smiles at him and for a moment he thinks he’s saved.

“You’re late, as usual,” she says. She grabs him and throws him onto the couch. Stacy is there and Cuddy holds him down.

“This will hurt a lot,” Stacy says, positioning a chainsaw over his leg.

“It’s for your own good,” Cuddy assures him.

He wakes himself, screaming. His leg bursts into pain as he surges to his feet, panting, terrified. They aren’t there. It was a dream, it was only a dream, but his leg really does hurt.

House takes more Vicodin and drags himself to bed.

******

He’s in a tunnel that angles sharply downward. There’s a dim light somewhere behind him. There is a voice calling his name in that direction, muffled in the distance. House doesn’t want to talk to anyone. He heads deeper into the cave, curious to find what’s there. His leg doesn’t hurt, doesn’t slow him, and he’s happy about that.

It’s dark here. He has a candle but no canary, which is dangerous; Wilson will be angry at him when he finds out, but Wilson is busy with Sam. It serves him right that he’ll notice too late to stop House from exploring.

He heads down. The tunnel closes in around him. House scrambles over rocks and squeezes through narrow channels where the walls come together. He’s not sure he’s going to be able to make it out again but he keeps going anyway.

“House!” he hears, and something rubs hard against his sternum. House bats it away and is surprised at the lack of strength in his arms.

“House,” Wilson says again. What’s Wilson doing in his cave?

A light shines into his eyes. House groans. Wilson’s face swims into focus.

“Get up,” he says. He sounds grim. He gets a shoulder under House’s arm and tries to lift him off the bed. House tries to get his feet under him but he’s weak. Weak and useless and tumbling.

He’s on his side on the floor. He sees that very clearly, and then he starts to drift again, and somewhere House knows this is bad and maybe he took too many pills, but it doesn’t hurt anymore, so there’s that, and he’s on a cloud sinking very slowly. It’s comfortable here, peaceful and pain-free.

Something stings his thigh and he tries to push it away but he can’t make his arm move. It hurts but he lets himself drift away, just drift, and it doesn’t matter anymore.

******

The cloud quickly dissolves into his bedroom. House is lying on his side on the floor with Wilson’s worried face hovering over him like a setting moon. House is completely clear-headed and he’s pissed.

“What did you do?” he growls.

Wilson holds up a syringe. “Nalaxone.”

“Dammit, Wilson,” House says, shouting. “I’m in pain!”

“Yes,” Wilson shoots back, “and I just wanted to burst your bubble for no reason other than your lips were turning blue and you were nonresponsive.”

That stops House. He took the second dose too quickly. It shakes him. He’s relapsed and he might have died from it. He can’t think of a single reason not to do it again, either, which means he will.

“What do we do now?” House asks, hating how he sounds, but he doesn’t know what to do, can’t trust himself to think clearly. For all he knows, this could all be a hallucination “How do I even know you’re real?”

Wilson grimaces at that. “You’ll just have to trust me,” he says, and squeezes House’s shoulder for a second. Then he gets to his feet and walks away. House can hear Wilson moving things around in his closet and a few moments later Wilson reappears with a suitcase. He begins to pack House’s clothes, his toiletries.

There’s something very wrong with him, because he can’t think of a single dismissive or obnoxious thing to say. His mind is drifting, rudderless, and he’s not sure even now that any of this is truly happening.

He waits for Wilson to bustle back into his field of vision. “Kiss me,” he demands.

Wilson's mouth tightens. "Hard as it is to believe, I think I'll forego the honor."

“You know you want to. You’ve wanted to for years. This is your chance. If you don’t like it, you can tell me later it was a hallucination. It’s not like it’d be the first time I’ve had psychotic sex.”

Wilson stops. His hands are on his hips. “Call me old fashioned, but I prefer a partner capable of meaningful consent. Besides, you’re only asking in order to find out whether I’m real or not. I--” he pauses, thinking. “I suppose that parallels your hallucination of Cuddy last year.” There is a note in his voice House can’t place. He is too out of it to figure it out.

Wilson is right, though. If this were House’s hallucination he and Wilson would be—-but they aren’t. The rejection stings, which is stupid. Why would Wilson want him? Why would Wilson ever want him, let alone now when House is filthy and high and weak? On the other hand, maybe House’s libido isn’t in charge of this hallucination. Maybe his self-destructive streak is calling the shots.

He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

“Hey,” Wilson says. His hands frame House’s face, lift it. “I’m taking you to the hospital. You have to get up.”

House looks at him. He is terrified that this isn’t real, that his subconscious is manufacturing what he wants. If Wilson is a product of his imagination, does that mean House is going to drive somewhere? He doesn’t think he can drive. He feels uncoordinated, disconnected from his body. Lost.

He can think this through. Is it likely Wilson would be here? Or is it more likely he’d be at the hospital with Cuddy or at home with Sam?

Turns out, those aren’t hard questions.

“This isn’t real,” he says, unreasonably hurt and angry at Wilson for being a figment of his imagination. “I wish you were. I--” need you, he was going to say, but he won’t speak those words, not even to a hallucination. “You’re not real.”

Wilson lets go of him.

“You gonna vanish now?” House asks harshly, because even hallucinatory Wilson is better than being alone.

“For the moment,” Wilson agrees. He leaves the room, and House is annoyed with his subconscious for making him go.

Wilson returns, arms full of pillows and blankets, a large medical bag hanging on his shoulder. “I’ll wait for you to sober up. Barring some new medical crisis, we can wait to get to a hospital in the morning.”

He arranges House to his liking, and sits down on the floor beside him, cross-legged. He dims the lights and pulls out an e-reader.

“Get some sleep, if you can. You’ll get through this, House.”

House is on the floor. He is breathing. He is certain that he is breathing. In a few hours Wilson will either still be here, or he won’t. House presses his forehead against Wilson’s leg. It feels solid and warm and real, but Cuddy felt that way too. He can’t be sure, but so long as he keeps breathing he’ll find out in a few hours. He feels Wilson’s hand come to rest lightly on his back.

He closes his eyes.


	2. Option Two...Wilson arrives in time

“You gonna leap across the room and snatch them out of my hand?”

Wilson stands in the doorway. He tilts his head, as if searching for hidden meanings in House’s question. Without answering, he makes his way over to House, stepping gingerly over glass and debris. “You mind if we adjourn to someplace less likely to end in a trip to the ER?”

Wilson holds out his hand, obviously offering to pull House to his feet. House ignores it. He isn’t ready to leave. What he wants is a pill. Maybe he wants all of them.

Wilson crouches down in front of him. “Does it hurt that much?”

House nods slowly, looking fixedly at the bottles, at his hands, looking at anything but Wilson.

There is silence. House tries to imagine the look on Wilson’s face. Disappointment, he thinks. Disgust.

Wilson walks out.

House stops breathing. He doesn’t hear the front door close, though. He hears rummaging, and then Wilson is back with House’s old ratty broom and dustpan. House watches him work. There is something seriously wrong with Wilson, if, after the kind of day he must have had, he’d come here to sweep instead of going home to sleep with his girlfriend.

“Why are you here?” House asks finally, when the broom is tucked away again.

Wilson sits down beside him. “I was worried.”

“I’m fine,” House snaps. He doesn’t want Wilson’s pity. “Go home to your once and future ex.”

“I can’t,” Wilson says, “my friend needs me.”

House scoffs. Wilson’s hypocrisy is choking him. “I needed you last week too, and you threw me out. Nothing’s changed since then.”

“Threw you out? I didn’t dump your stuff on the lawn. I told you I’d help you start making plans. You—you threw yourself out!”

“I didn’t want to wait around for the eviction notice,” House says.

“I told you to come back,” Wilson argues.

“So you could throw me out again in two weeks? Let me feel the chill as you ignore me when I walk past?” He doesn’t give Wilson time to answer. He’s too angry now to stop. “You abandoned me. You told me I had a home with you and that was a lie. You left me for her and now you’re feeling guilty about the consequences. Go home!”

He’d like to get up and stomp out, but when he moves his leg shoots pain like a laser beam up his nerve fibers and he’s holding it and gasping. He gropes for the Vicodin but Wilson reaches the bottles first.

“Give them to me!” House grabs for the bottles, intending to rip them right out of Wilson’s grasp. Wilson jerks away, leaving House with a handful of nothing.

House wants to kill him.

“Are you sure you want these?” Wilson asks. He’s practically pleading. “Don’t throw away a drug free year. You’ve worked so hard.”

“For nothing!” House yells. “I spent a year in pain for nothing. Cuddy was right. You’ve both chosen someone else, so what was it for?”

Wilson swallows. “It was for you, House. To make your life just a little better. To help you be just a little happier.”

“Look at my face,” House growls. “How well do you think that’s working?”

“It’s not,” Wilson says.

House waits. The other shoe is about to drop.

An eternity later, Wilson adds, “I think it’s time we tried something else, don’t you?”

“Did you have something specific in mind?” House asks, because Wilson must. He’s not going back to PT or a psych. hospital, though. He’s not.

“Yes, actually,” Wilson says. “It involves you starting a relationship.”

That’s perhaps the most spectacularly stupid thing House has ever heard him say. “Cuddy’s engaged, and she’s made it pretty clear she’s not interested.”

Wilson scowls. “Cuddy is exactly as capable of marrying Lucas tomorrow as she is of throwing him over tonight and coming here to hook up with you. That’s why you keep obsessing over her. You know perfectly well you’re one mood swing away from getting lucky.”

House shrugs. He does know that. He and Cuddy have been like this for years. They’re stuck, and he doesn’t know what to do about it.

“I—I wasn’t thinking of her, anyway.”

“Spit it out!”

“Well, Cuddy may be happy with someone else,” Wilson says. He hesitates.

“But,” House prompts. It’s like pulling teeth.

“But I’m not.”

“Yes, you are.” House clambers to his feet so he can move. He’s too angry to stay still. “This is nothing but guilt and pity. It’s pointless.”

Wilson stands up, toe to toe with House. “I don’t pity you,” he says angrily. Then he takes House’s face in his hands and kisses him.

House is so stunned he lets it happen. He doesn’t respond. He’s not entirely sure this is really happening.

Wilson steps back, brows raised in challenge. It takes a moment for House to realize he’s supposed to say or do something now. He can’t imagine what that thing might be. Wilson—-isn’t a possibility he allows himself to think about.

The smile drains from Wilson’s face. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I misunderstood what you wanted. I’ll go now.” He puts the Vicodin bottles on the sink and turns to leave.

House moves after him. “Wait!”

Wilson stops, head bowed. Then he turns and comes back. Before House can say anything Wilson’s apologizing again. “I took advantage. I didn’t mean to, but that’s what happened. When you said Cuddy and I had chosen other people, I just thought…but I know you don’t mean it when you flirt with me. I accepted that a long time ago. I guess, in the moment, I got carried away. I promise it will never happen again.”

House stares at him. It’s like he’s a stranger. It’s like they are strangers to each other. “How could you hide this from me? How could I not see it?”

“Maybe you didn’t want to,” Wilson says, and House can practically see him hiding his emotions. It takes five seconds, tops, and then he looks just like he does every day.

House hates that. He takes a breath. “Maybe I was afraid that I was only seeing what I wanted to see.”

Wilson looks up at him.

House kisses him. Wilson settles in against him, and they start making out in earnest. His body is unfamiliar, but with a little adjusting they fit together. It’s hot and messy and perfect.

A few minutes or hours later, House stops. He doesn’t want to be an experiment, or an excuse to break it off with Sam, or a rebound from just having broken it off with Sam. “Are you sure about this?”

“Yes,” Wilson says breathlessly, and bites House’s neck.

“I mean it,” House says. “You need to understand what you’re asking for. I’ve pissed you off and I’ve hurt you, and it’s only a matter of time until I do it again. I don’t think I can change. I’m the most screwed up guy in the world.”

Wilson rolls his eyes. “Stop it. I have a schizophrenic brother who spent 25 years living on the streets. You think you’re screwed up? He still likes to eat out of dumpsters.”

House takes a breath. “Fine,” he says. “I’m the second most screwed up guy in the world. I’m still not going to change.”

Wilson gives an annoyed shrug. “I didn’t ask you to. I’m not going to change either. Now, did you want to start pissing off your new boyfriend tonight, or can we get on with the sex?”

It’s not a hard question. He feels better than he has any right to. His leg is okay, smothered in endorphins. His mind is clear. He’d rather hold Wilson than a bottle of Vicodin. Wilson tastes better.

House gives the only answer he possibly can. “No pissing off tonight,” he says. “Yes to the sex. Yes to the boyfriend.” He pulls Wilson closer and kisses him again. Wilson makes a noise like a happy sigh. “Definitely,” House says, “yes to the boyfriend.”

He doesn’t know where this is going or how long it will last. Maybe a bus will hit them tomorrow. Maybe the building will collapse next week. It probably will. They’ll be in bed and House will be at that moment right before orgasm and the entire building will come down on their heads.

House thinks he can make a tentative peace with this looming disaster. It’s not the worst way to go, and Wilson will be there with him. He can live with that.

End


End file.
